50 Great Ideas You Should Test in Your WordPress

Most of you are a little bit lost when trying to start a conversion rate optimization plan in your WordPress site. You don’t know what to test or how to start. And that’s probably the toughest moment for a newbie optimizer.

After your first test, you’ll generate new ideas easily, once you’ve analyzed the results. But first, you need to get started with an initial experiment. For those of you tired of thinking about where to begin, here’s you have 50 ideas you should test in your WordPress.

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Calls to action

Your calls to action are a critical element of your WordPress site. Every button or link that you place to convert visitors into leads or customers by filling out a form, buying a product, or perform an action is the key to success. Improving their efficiency making visitors do what you want them to do may bring big wins to your metrics.

1. Try different locations for your calls to action. Highlight them to be visible from the start.
2. Try several calls to action instead of just one. Maybe put one at the start of your page, another at the bottom, and so on. That’s the way to always make them reachable even if the visitors scroll down your page.
3. Change the text of your calls to action. Try different alternatives like “Sign up now”, “Join for free”, etc., to find the one that gets more clicks.
4. Put icons in your calls to action. Try common fonts like Font Awesome or Dashicons in combination of the call-to-action text.
5. Change the color, size, and font family of your calls to action. As we already explained in a previous article, colors and their meanings are really important. Find the one that converts the best.

Content

The content is the king. It explains who you are and what you do to your visitors. A great content may boost your conversions creating trust. Use split testing to align your content with your audience.

6. Test alternative headlines. Use buzzwords to entice your visitors read the whole content.
7. Use bullet lists and short sentences instead of long paragraphs. Test both versions to see what your audience wants.
8. Try different tones for your content. Change to formal or informal according to your target audience.
9. Make contact information more visible to try to get more leads.
10. Test an alternative version including testimonials to gain trust with your visitors.
11. Try using referral links in your content to check whether you get more revenues or not.
12. Include a section showing your team. Try to make the communication more personal, showing that there is real people behind your site.

Media

Media files in your site have a great influence in your visitors and, therefore, in the conversions you may get from them. Using A/B testing with images, videos, and other assets is a great idea that could boost your WordPress site.

13. Change your images with alternative versions. Do that even for products, if your WordPress contains an e-commerce section.
14. Test using background videos in your landing pages.
15. Show a video in your landing page. Investigate if your audience prefers visual content instead of text.
16. Change stock images with your own images and see which performs better.
17. Test different voice overs for the videos on your site.
18. Try offering something (an e-book, a bunch of images, or any other media resource) for free. Or ask for contact information to get more leads.
19. Test sliders versus static images.
20. Add trust indicators in your payment pages, including logos of your customers, ratings, comments…
21. Check if your users prefer an image of people. Then test gender, age, number of people in the image, etc.

Menus

The navigation menu serves as the index for all the newcomers landing in your site. When they get lost in your site, the menu will guide them to the right contents. That’s why you have to rethink your menu and the items it contains.

22. Reorder the menu items and see if the change increases your metrics.
23. Try hiding the menu in your purchase page to avoid visitors get distracted of the main goal.
24. Create a different version of the menu adding a menu item for each target market you want to reach.
25. Simplify the menu using just one level of depth. Create an alternative without sub-items.
26. Include a menu in the footer with relevant pages for the inquisitive customers (legal information, privacy policies, etc.).
27. Test a fixed navigation menu bar that travels down the page as your site visitors scroll.

Forms

Asking for your visitors’ information has never been easy. Split testing may help you creating better forms without annoying your visitors and getting more leads.

28. Reduce the amount of information that you ask to your visitors. Make their life easier.
29. Test alternative versions of your forms using several steps instead of asking everything upfront.
30. Change the order of the form fields to see which combination produces more conversions.
31. When asking information for a free-trial or demo, test asking just the e-mail. See if this gets more leads.
32. Include explanations about what will happen after submitting the form (will your visitors get spammed?)
33. If you ask for duplicate fields (mobile phone, business phone, …) create an alternative where you avoid asking duplicated information.

Widgets

WordPress provides widget areas where you can place additional content like ads or banners to promote your site or to link to other places of interest. However, preventing your visitors from ignoring them is not an easy task. Just test your widgets to increase the results.

34. Reorder your widgets to see whether they capture your visitors’ attention and avoid banner blindness.
35. Include a sidebar with banners pointing to your landing pages or pricing page in your blog to reduce bounce rates.
36. Test alternative contents for your banners. Make them more appealing to your visitors.
37. Test widgets with styles similar to your general style versus widgets with completely different styles.
38. Create a simplified variant of your sidebar including just a widget with a call to action.

Pricing

Yes, you can test the pricing strategy when you are selling products through your site. Are your visitors running away because your prices are too high? Do they trust you when you offer quality products at lower prices? Things like these can be discovered by split testing your pricing.

39. If you have different packages or product alternatives, highlight the one you want your visitors to choose more. Mark it as “Best choice”, “Recommended”, or any other text to make it prominent.
40. Change the order of the packages, from the cheaper to the more expensive and the other way around. You may find surprises.
41. When selling recurring services or products, test different payment frequencies. Include an anual payment and compare it with the monthly one. Find which one produces a highest life time value.
42. Test offering a money-back guarantee period. Then compare the increase in purchases versus the refunds you need to perform.
43. Try an alternative version offering discounts in order to adjust the prices iteratively. Do the same increasing the prices and check whether you lose conversions or not.
44. Create an alternative version clarifying that your visitors will be able to upgrade, downgrade, or cancel at any time.

Social

Sharing your contents or connecting with your audience through social networks is nowadays mandatory for any organization. Your site needs to serve as an additional link between your networks and your contents.

45. Change the size and placement of social icons to see if your visitors make more shares.
46. Try a restyling of your social icons. Find a different set of icons and test if they perform better.
47. Include sharing options in your blog posts. Try different plugins to do that and stick with the best one.
48. Add additional social networks in your site. Discover whether you and your audience are in the same networks.

Design

Finally, the style of your site tells a lot about you or your organization. If you’re not happy with your current WordPress theme, try to improve it and test the changes.

49. Try a completely different theme for your WordPress site. Some of our customers found great results doing that. Take some considerations when selecting the alternative theme.
50. Create a child theme of your WordPress theme and change the colors. Just some new CSS rules will do the trick (or you can use the customizer if your theme supports that).

These are just a few starting points to help you getting into the optimization world. Remember that most (if not all) of these tests can be easily created and executed with Nelio A/B Testing. If you think we missed something valuable or need more help, let us know in the comments and we’ll update the list with your suggestions.

Featured image by wiredforlego